This study was conducted to deeply analyze various problems caused by the narrowness of school sports facilities and to improve them. First of all, school sports facilities are educational spaces that have the character of eradicating school violence,...
This study was conducted to deeply analyze various problems caused by the narrowness of school sports facilities and to improve them. First of all, school sports facilities are educational spaces that have the character of eradicating school violence, reducing juvenile delinquent behavior, and practicing desirable character education by enabling students to relieve stress, release physical needs, and foster positive attitudes and desirable sociality. In addition, it is a space that has the character of a youth leisure culture, and serves as an escape route that relieves the academic stress and emotional and physical burden of youth, and also contains the character of a place shared with the local community, contributing to the improvement of the quality of healthy life through stress relief and health promotion of local residents. In summary, school sports facilities are an important environment that lays the foundation for students’ social sports and lifelong sports, and are a space for youth leisure culture and a community space shared with local residents. However, as time goes by, the size of school sports facilities is becoming smaller and smaller, losing their spatial significance as school sports facilities, and this is aggravating the suffering of the educational community. Accordingly, the researcher conducted this study to minimize the suffering of the educational community due to limited school sports facilities by expanding them so that they can sufficiently perform their educational and spatial functions, and to establish a cultural foundation for building school sports facilities that can satisfy all members.
The research environment was selected as Blue High School, which opened in Gyeongnam in 2023. Blue High School is a newly established school centered on an educational community with a state-of-the-art educational environment and facilities, including comfortable and convenient educational facilities. However, it has the fatal flaw of being an overcrowded school with limited school sports facilities.
The research method utilized textmining techniques and case study analysis from a phenomenological place theory perspective. Specifically, textmining techniques were utilized to find out the perception of small physical education spaces in overcrowded schools, and case study analysis was conducted to find out the placeness of physical education spaces in overcrowded schools from a phenomenological theory of place. Textmining techniques were used to explore students' perceptions of small physical education spaces in overcrowded schools and, based on this, to identify the pain and difficulties in school education caused by small physical education spaces in overcrowded schools. The study subjects consisted of a total of 447 people, selected using convenience sampling, a non-probability sampling method. Data collection was conducted using a structured open-ended questionnaire to investigate students' perceptions of school physical facilities in order to explore students' perceptions of small physical facilities in overcrowded schools. The questionnaire was conducted for a total of two months from March 10, 2025 to May 12, 2025. For data processing, various keywords were extracted using the R 4.4.3 package of the RStudio program, and the derived keywords were visualized using the wordcloud package of the RStudio program.
The data collected from the questionnaire (text database) went through a data purification process (date processing) about six times to extract keyword frequencies, and the results of the data analysis were visualized using the wordcloud package of the RStudio program to increase the comprehension of the information.
Next, a case study analysis was conducted to deeply investigate the place identity of school sports facilities in overcrowded schools. The research participants were selected from three physical education teachers and seven students currently working at Parang High School. To select the research participants, one of the non-probability sampling methods, and purposeful sampling were used. Data collection involved participant observation, in-depth interviews, and content analysis to gather more data, and data analysis involved description, analysis, and interpretation. The authenticity of the data was verified through long-term participant observation, triangulation, peer deliberation, progressive subjectivity, thick description, and member checks.
The results of the textmining technique, word cloud analysis, on the perception of the space of school sports facilities and the perception of small sports spaces in overcrowded schools are as follows.
First, the frequently appearing words in the word cloud related to the perception of the space of school sports facilities were ‘friends (228)’, ‘physical strength (97)’, ‘freedom (68)’, ‘memories (68)’, ‘interest (36)’, ‘exercise (33)’, ‘activity (31)’, ‘energy (30)’, ‘academic advancement (26)’, ‘health (23)’, ‘sports (22)’, ‘mind (21)’, ‘evacuation (19)’, ‘rest (19)’, ‘communication (18)’, ‘friendship (18)’, ‘sociability (18)’, ‘cooperation (19)’, ‘physical activity (14)’, and ‘fun (14)’ in that order. Through word cloud analysis, it was confirmed that the words ‘friends’, ‘physical strength’, ‘freedom’, and ‘memories’ were prominently visualized.
Second, the frequently appearing words in the word cloud regarding the perception of small physical education spaces in overcrowded schools were ‘class disruption (245)’, ‘activity disruption (243)’, ‘violence (154)’, ‘restriction of sports (148)’, ‘lack of exercise (125)’, ‘conflict (122)’, ‘physical activity disruption (114)’, ‘lack of events (98)’, ‘danger (59)’, ‘lack of time (50)’, ‘conflict (50)’, ‘sports (41)’, ‘deprivation of opportunity (39)’, ‘restrictions (39)’, ‘limitations (37)’, ‘dissatisfaction (33)’, ‘narrow scope (29)’, ‘friends (29)’, ‘concentration (28)’, and ‘reduced activity (27)’, in that order. Through word cloud analysis, ‘class disruption’, It was confirmed that the words ‘obstruction of activities’, ‘violence’, and ‘restriction of items’ were prominently visualized.
The results of the case study analysis on the placeness of overcrowded school physical education spaces from the perspective of Relph's phenomenological place theory are as follows.
First, it was confirmed that the playground and gymnasium of Blue High School failed to establish their identity as a school sports space due to the lack of physical environment, one of the three elements that determine Relph’s place identity.
Second, it was confirmed that the small physical education space of Blue High School caused students to have limited opportunities to participate in physical activities, which resulted in a lack of human activity, one of the three elements that determine Relph’s place identity, and thus failed to establish its identity as a school physical education space.
Third, the small physical education space of Blue High School caused physical education to decline in its status as a subject due to its narrowness, which resulted in a lack of the meaning element among the three elements that determine Relph's place identity. Accordingly, it was confirmed that the small sports space failed to establish its identity as a school sports space. In summary, it was confirmed that the small physical education space of Blue High School failed to establish its identity as a space for school physical education classes due to the lack of Relph's three elements of place identity.